I think Mr Demon is looking in disgust at his birthday present. Oh no, another pink dagger from grandma.

I would say if you want the dagger to be a focal point then set up a separate light for it and assuming the blade is silver, make the light fairly bright with a short focal length and a cone that just covers the blade. The rest of the lighting looks great. Dark and brooding.

Thanks for the feedback. At the moment I am not sure what I want the focal point of the render to be, I was just seeing if I could create a nice lighting effect using only one light in the scene.

Lighting is one of the things I'm trying to get to grips with because I used to fail massively with it. What I've learned is that sometimes you can create more atmosphere by using less lights, so yes, you've achieved a great deal with that pic.

I'm hoping it was obvious that my first comment about grandma's dagger was in good humour, but I realised after I posted it that a comment made in good humour could actually be quite painful, and that posting a WIP in here is a little like baring your soul.

Well, I finally decided to get something done! My original idea was overwritten though while I was listening to the Queen II album! I was in my car singing along to March of the Black Queen very loudly and thinking I love that title, and the song, and that I'd like to base my image on that.

So far I've just done the main parts of the environment. I know there's no sky, but I can solve that.

Lighting is achieved so far using three very soft blue-grey distance lights and one brighter light to simulate the moon. Still needs work but I wanted to post something so that I'm then committed to finishing!

Next step is to populate the scene, and I'm REALLY looking forward to that, I've got some ideas.

Night lighting is one of those that is hard to accomplish properly. I see a future contest idea stirring.

Yeah, because of the lighting I've switched to full raytracing now and high shadow softness apart from the moon which has a lower softness. I have plans to make the lights make more sense to the viewer but I don;t want to go into detail in case I cock it up and end up giving someone ideas that will ultimately fail. Am enjoying this though.

{edit} - Killed the render with the new lighting before it finished. It was clear that the scene had transformed itself from a dusk setting to a middle of the afternoon setting, so once again I've played with my lighting, both position and strength, and am re-rendering. Was hoping to put a new WIP up here but it's midnight, my computer will turn into a pumpkin any second and I'm about to lose one of my slippers again. Hate when that happens.

G'night guys, I'm loving what I'm seeing here and glad to finally be a part of it.

Ok, so, I put my Black Queen into my pic, still unhappy with the night-time lights but I do have ideas for solving that. Here's my latest addition to the entry, but still a long, long way to go.

Incidentally, this is without a doubt the longest I've spent on one picture. Normally I have to get everything done at once or I lose interest, and I've lost count of how many times that's happened, so I'm very pleased about that.

Have a lot to do with this one, not happy with those really dark shadows and would like to make the background darker.

It has just gone midnight here and I think I should get some sleep and have another look tomorrow. I want to post the first one in a different thread (when I finish it) so I started this one for this thread.

Also I would like to make the vampires body to glow a bit, tried it with the ambient channel but it didn't look convincing.

It is interesting what BlumBlumShub said about lighting, less is more and all that. I agree with spookey type of images. I find it hard to do these types of images so they have the intended impact so I will be learning along side you all.

Ok, so, I put my Black Queen into my pic, still unhappy with the night-time lights but I do have ideas for solving that. Here's my latest addition to the entry, but still a long, long way to go.

Incidentally, this is without a doubt the longest I've spent on one picture. Normally I have to get everything done at once or I lose interest, and I've lost count of how many times that's happened, so I'm very pleased about that.

Oh boy, I'm liking this so far. I can not wait to see what you do here. (Ren & Stimpy) JOY! :-P

Have a lot to do with this one, not happy with those really dark shadows and would like to make the background darker.

It has just gone midnight here and I think I should get some sleep and have another look tomorrow. I want to post the first one in a different thread (when I finish it) so I started this one for this thread.

Also I would like to make the vampires body to glow a bit, tried it with the ambient channel but it didn't look convincing.

Ok, so, I put my Black Queen into my pic, still unhappy with the night-time lights but I do have ideas for solving that. Here's my latest addition to the entry, but still a long, long way to go.

Incidentally, this is without a doubt the longest I've spent on one picture. Normally I have to get everything done at once or I lose interest, and I've lost count of how many times that's happened, so I'm very pleased about that.

Oh boy, I'm liking this so far. I can not wait to see what you do here. (Ren & Stimpy) JOY! :-P

Well I'm enjoying working on it, but done nothing today except some rough sketches.